planet4ever said:
To get down to a monthly payment roughly equivalent to the lease payment (about $425 including tax) it will have to be a 8-year loan.
Yes, your calculation is more rigorous and "apples to apples" than mine. I did not allow for equalizing monthly payments, and didn't include the $7500 fed credit in the cap reduction on the lease, and I was using cost figures I did for my own SL purchase (not SV) "off-the-cuff" several weeks ago when I came up with the $2200 figure. Now that I think back on it, I was not even figuring interest differences at the time but the total out-of-pocket cost for purchasing my car vs. leasing and buying out the residual at the end, so I blew it in my previous post. I simply looked at the total lease payments plus the residual and subtracted that from the cost of buying the car with a 2.99% loan for 36 months. The calculation was roughly $41K for lease costs vs. $38.8 for buying with 100% financing. This also ignored the $2000 down payment for the lease and assumed I would keep the car at the end of the lease and not finance the residual. My bad....
Comparing the relative cost of leasing vs. buying is tricky business, though, because of all the variables. In your own thoughtful example, you mentioned:
There is, of course, the issue that you end up paying taxes on the interest, so the real difference is closer to $900.
Isn't there also an additional $650 in sales tax you pay up front with the lease on the $7500 fed credit which would not apply if you purchase? I know this is true in CA, maybe not in other states? There is also the $400 disposition fee if you give the car back at the end of the lease, which may or may not be negotiable, depending on what you do to replace the vehicle. These are the kinds of factors I struggle with when trying to figure the true cost of "buying first-adopter EV insurance" by leasing instead of buying.
Another hooker in my personal calculation at this point in time is that we have now pre-qualified for a 1.99% 24-month loan. Our total interest cost for this financing will be $771.85 on a $37,000 loan, assuming we put no money down at all. Of course, the monthly payments will be huge, but we could afford to put in a large down payment or even pay cash for the car if we wanted (which then introduces the lost "opportunity cost of money" factor).
When I look at all the "help" we are getting with this purchase--the $7500 from the feds, the $5,000 from CA, the $2200 charger from the EVP and the free L3 port--plus the lower operating cost of the car and the likelihood that we will want to keep it and buy out the residual, it makes less and less sense to me to lease. I just don't think the worst-case scenarios regarding its resale value will result in us losing terribly on the deal, and the opposite might very well happen--the battery pack may prove to be reliable and long-lived.
Luckily, much as I hate waiting, we still have several months to ponder the alternatives before our car arrives. The more info i can glean from this forum in the meantime, the better off I will be when I finally have to make the decision...
TT